One of the biggest winners in Malcolm Turnbull‘s cabinet reshuffle was Queensland Senator Matthew Canavan, who was elected in 2013 and has already seen himself take up the Resources portfolio.
But if you inexplicably held out the deluded belief that our new resources minister would mirror Turnbull’s personal beliefs around climate change and the environment, you’d be wrong. He thinks there’s ‘uncertainty’ around the impact of climate change, and wrote in The Australian that the government should fund climate change skeptics:
We need red team funding of scientists who take a different view on climate change. Even if such teams ultimately take positions that are incorrect, by challenging the climate zeitgeist they would make our scientific knowledge stronger. That means the policies we implement would be based less on dogma and more on a true appreciation of how carbon dioxide emissions affect our world.
By ‘making our scientific knowledge stronger’, he means disregarding the overwhelming consensus around climate change in favour of throwing taxpayer funds at the few people left who will argue that a bit of climate change can’t hurt.
“There is a level of uncertainty about the impact of carbon emissions,” Canavan told Sky News. He has also described the Adani Carmichael coalmine as a huge win for Australia, and thinks that coal is fiiiiine for the environment.
“The idea that we can only meet our targets through innovation in renewables – which certainly can happen and there is a big future for solar and other things – the idea that that is the only area that we can meet our targets is kind of narrow.”
So obviously we can expect some wonderful progress on climate targets over the next few years.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: ABC News.
